TokenEx partners with Edmond Public Schools to fight student lunch debt

EDMOND – Jan. 24, 2020 – Edmond students returned from the holidays to find their lunch debts from the previous semester forgiven, thanks to a local data security company.

Edmond-based TokenEx worked with Edmond Public Schools to settle the balance of the unpaid meals while also committing to covering the cost of additional lunch debt for the foreseeable future.

“We would like to thank TokenEx for this generous gift which will make a difference in the lives of more than 900 of our students,” Edmond Public Schools Superintendent Bret Towne said. “The willingness of TokenEx and its employees to support our students and schools in this way truly exemplifies the “Oklahoma Standard.”

TokenEx founder Alex Pezold understands the difficulty of offering free meals to students when budgets are already stretched thin, and he believes schools want to put students in a position to succeed.

“Edmond Public Schools is doing the absolute best they can with the resources they receive from the state, and we’re grateful for the opportunity they gave us to participate in solving a big challenge all school districts are facing,” Pezold said. “We simply want to help eliminate hunger so children can focus on learning and taking advantage of the wonderful opportunities our schools provide to them.”

But he recognizes that more help is needed.

“Every Monday, kids are coming to school – perhaps not having had much to eat over the weekend – and they’re hungry,” Pezold said. “I don’t think it’s reasonable to ask a child to focus on learning when they’re hungry and feel ashamed because they don’t have access to the same nutrition as every other child. This is a situation the TokenEx team will remedy, because it’s our belief that children must receive the proper nutrition to thrive.”

Supporting school lunch programs became a focus for Pezold when he first read about lunch-shaming in the newspaper. Pezold, who believes strongly in the relationship between childhood nutrition and academic success, wants to remove the stigma of lunch debt.

“Unfortunately, children are making fun of less fortunate children because they can’t afford school lunch,” Pezold said. “Think about it – if you’re a child and your options were to face peer judgment or not to eat, what’s the most likely outcome?”

Pezold, who lives in Edmond but is originally from the Tulsa area, hopes to expand the program next year to include Tulsa elementary schools. Pezold also encourages more organizations to join TokenEx in the fight to end childhood hunger by supporting this effort in other school districts.

In addition to working with Edmond Public Schools, TokenEx has partnered with the University of Tulsa and the Salvation Army for other charitable projects.

Founded in 2010, TokenEx is an Oklahoma-based data security company committed to protecting the world’s most sensitive data from attack. It’s a four-time recipient of the Metro 50 award for the Oklahoma City metro’s fastest-growing private companies. TokenEx also has offices in Tulsa and London.

For more information, visit TokenEx.com or contact [email protected] directly with any questions about the company, its platform, or how familiarity with tokenization can help organizations and their customers.

About TokenEx

TokenEx is an industry-leading data security company specializing in tokenization for payments and privacy use cases. Its cloud security platform can secure and desensitize any structured data element to reduce risk, minimize scope, and simplify compliance while enabling its clients’ most critical business processes.